


Return to Ash

by letterfromsilentheaven



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, End of the World, Eternal Life, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Apocalypse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-15 03:58:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letterfromsilentheaven/pseuds/letterfromsilentheaven
Summary: As their journey comes to an end, the trio realizes that it is only the beginning. They are now faced with a bigger problem than any before: Androids have the potential to live forever. [Major spoilers for the entire game]  [Explicit 2B/9S] [Existential nightmare]





	1. 438

**Author's Note:**

> I have always had this somber enjoyment of the incredibly slow end of the world. I hope you enjoy it too. I hope this story hurts you, I hope it touches you, and I hope you feel the same way I do about the characters of Nier: Automata. I want to thank fanfiction writer The Extreme Piercing for introducing me to this concept with their incredible Dark Souls story, 'Old Soul'. You should read it if you like the concept behind this one. This story exists on the idea that after the end, the trio of protagonists are the only non-animal life left on the planet. 
> 
> Enjoy, and please leave a comment/review if you'd be so kind.

Return to Ash

Chapter 1: 438

"Because I could not stop for death -

he kindly stopped for me.

The carriage held but just ourselves -

and immortality." - Emily Dickinson

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

"Ngh! Ngh! Ungh! Hngh!"

Rythmically, her fist collided with his crumpled face over and over. Like a piston, her shoulder cocked and then released hissing pressure with such force that the joint creaked beneath her flesh. She grunted manically with the effort each time, every instinct in her head screaming that this had to stop. These feelings he was feeling had to end. He coughed and sputtered as she pounded him relentlessly, hot tears streaming down her face. Though he could move, and act, and fight back, he no longer had the strength or the will to.

The ash whirled around them like a dust storm. That's all that remained: ash. It was just the two of them, some soot, and the crumbled remains of what few buildings stood above the layer of dark sand that buried the planet in its shallow grave.

2B threw a final punch that was so hard it caused her body to twist, follow the movement, and her elbow skidded into the dirt beside 9S' frail head. She tumbled, collapsing right on top of him and knocking what wind remained out of his body. As her weak being was wracked with sobs of fear, sobs of anger, sobs of pain, he held her.

"Please don't do this." She whimpered. "Please. Please."

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

In the first days after awakening, the trio sat with heavy hearts. 9S, his arm still stiff after being reattached, looked dumbfounded and shocked. 2B was in disbelief but held him close, reassuring him as he recovered from his mental degradation. A2 just stared on.

Like a gaggle of sorry phoenixes, they'd risen from the crumpled ruins of YoRHa to begin their lives again. But what was life without anyone to share it with? There were no longer any androids, no machines, and of course no humans. Just themselves and the animal kingdom that now ruled the shell of the once great blue planet.

Initially A2 had no idea what to expect when she first saw 9S alive and well. She wondered if he would boil over with rage, try to kill her on sight even though 2B was already standing right next to him. If he would scream and cry and try to choke her to death, as if he ever could manage the necessary strength. He'd said he'd never forgive his grudge but what of it now? Now that it was all over? Obviously none of them had planned for this.

To her surprise, he was remarkably sane. She figured it was owed to 2B's continued presence more than anything, but she had to admit it was pleasant to be able to look at him without the point of a blade being pointed in her direction as well. The first thing he did was quietly apologize for his behavior, met with a non-chalant "It's whatever, kid". Of course, A2 did not remotely believe that, in fact she'd liked little more than to smack him on the head and ask what he was thinking, but it made him feel better and so she let it lie. Her urge to take her revenge on him did not pass for some time.

Naturally, they'd experienced a sense of bliss at finding one another alive and well, without corruption or broken parts or anything of the sort. It was like they'd just been pulled off of the assembly line and given consciousness for the first time. 9S and 2B held each other tightly for most of the initial couple weeks, just staring at each other. It unnerved A2, but she supposed that they deserved it after all they had been through. All they had ever wanted was their peace, and now they had it.

She herself was disgruntled. She'd thought that was it for them all. She had genuinely assumed she was coming home, to meet her maker, to see her brethren in the good old fashioned afterlife. What a joke. They had the privilege of being dead and buried under rubble and yet she remained a vagrant. As 2B and 9S coddled one another like children having their first crush, she drew into herself in solitude and wondered what was going to happen to them now.

If there really were no more androids on the planet, and they had been revived by the pods in a last ditch effort to give them their happiness, then what was going to happen when an eternity had passed? With no fighting to do and no reason to self-terminate, they could potentially live forever. To her, it sounded miserable.

But in a way, she was grateful. If she had to spend eternity with somebody, she'd rather it be these two giggling lovers than some shitty group of ragtag misfits.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

"We should search for other survivors," 2B said. She looked practically naked without a sword in her hand or on her back. So much more vulnerable with only her fists to defend herself from the world- not like there was anything left to defend themselves from. 9S, of course, immediately agreed with her without a second thought.

But A2 shook her head. "There aren't any. Why would there be?"

2B ignored her question. "They must exist somewhere. Maybe they fled underground, to the tunnels."

"What part of, 'extinction of all YoRHa units' don't you get?" A2 frowned at her. "The resistance was a part of YoRHa. They're gone."

9S reached across their meager huddle, the trio of stumps they sat upon, and put his hand on A2's knee gingerly. She wanted to recoil in mock-disgust, but she held steady, meeting his gaze.

"We do have an infinite amount of time to look. We might as well, right?"

As much as she was annoyed by the idea, the vain hope of it all, she could not argue with that. The three's projected lifespan sans maintenance was not indefinite, but they all knew it was so long that it may as well have been.

And so their journey began. Starting with the city where the resistance once made their final stand against the machines, they scoured every building. Every forest. Every tunnel running spidery veins underneath the ruins of civilization. Of course, there was nothing to be found, not even the rising cinders of freshly vaporized bodies. It was almost eerie in a way; it was as if the androids had never lived on the planet at all.

Yet, the machines remained. Their dead husks littered nearly every nook and cranny they explored. They had wormed their way into any hiding spot, anything large enough for a machine to be there likely held one inside. Anything to try and escape the collapse of the network and their screaming demise. Of course, it was no use for them just like it was no use for the androids and the humans before them.

Without any other way to spend their time, they expanded their search, finally following up on the rumors from so long ago that the android race held factions across the planet's surface. They explored unfamiliar territory, crumbling ruins of larger and still larger cities. Towering skyscrapers still loomed like leaning monuments, shadowing their awed expressions. 9S and 2B held one another's hands as they viewed the spectacles of human ingenuity throughout... wherever they were. That data remained corrupted even now that nothing was left to corrupt it.

Weeks turned into a month. Then two. Every day a new location, every day 9S' voice ringing out as he sent out giant electric pulses like smoke signals to anyone who could be listening, android or otherwise. Their only reply came from birds fleeing the resonance.

Disappointment struck them when they finally hit the sea. In all directions, creating a strange oblong shape around them, the rolling sand and beaches dropped softly into a massive horizon-spanning white and blue. They had no way to cross it, no way to see the rest of the Earth. Had they flight units, they could be across the vast expanse in minutes. Had they teleportation chambers, they could be on the other side of the whole world in mere seconds. But now they felt like simple creatures stuck on an island. 

9S suggested building a boat or another kind of water craft, but they solemnly realized then that they didn't know how. There was no robot life left on the planet- A2 remained sure of that much -but now there was a very real sense of nihilism that they could all feel equally. Sure, they could spend however long it would take learning how to make a fully functioning boat from the scattered machine parts lying around, but what would be the point if there was naught to be found on the other side of the ocean but more crumpled architecture?

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

As if it had been freed from heavy shackles, the ball breaking free of its chain, the dead hunk of rock began to heal. Thousands of years of abuse and death and decay had crippled the planet, but now that it was finally returned to its neutral state, it could recover from the torture it'd endured. 9S alerted the others with a start that something strange was happening, something completely foreign to him. The others listened intently as he postulated a theory.

"I think the... Earth is coming back to life." He said. The evidence was all around them; plants stretched skyward with glistening bulbs, trees rising from the ground like gigantic sprawling towers. Animal life reclaiming the planet they once held domain over.

When asked for evidence, he brought up a screen before them to show his collected data. "Look," he said softly. "We're moving. The planet is rotating on its axis at about one tenth of a kilometer per hour." A far cry from the speed it used to spin at when humans once roamed its surface, but it was still something. A practically unreadable decimal place far down the line increasing steadily showed him that it was not yet done.

High above them, for the first time in over five thousand years, the sun began to depart from the top of the sky. Like the machines they waged such an intense war against, the three of them just sat in a clearing and watched it go. Their eyes were firmly trained on the bright yellow orb as it seemed to wave goodbye to them, ever so slowly disappearing over the treeline. The sky grew pink, then orange, then a deep red, and it was gone.

2B cried that night. For the first time since they had awoken, she curled into herself and sobbed. These emotions were still relatively new to her- or, relatively newly accessible, at least. She sat with 9S, who leaned on her shoulder as if he weighed a hundred thousand pounds, and wept. A2 kept her watch from a short distance, giving them at least some semblance of privacy. She cursed herself for being so much closer to human than they were, and yet still so far that she couldn't give herself the same emotional release. Then again, she considered, perhaps she didn't want it anyway.

"I don't understand," 2B sniffled, "why this is happening."

9S shrugged, still leaning into her to offer the best comfort he could. "If I had to guess, I'd say the change in scenery probably brought it on. You've been looking at daylight for decades, y'know?"

"Yes," she whimpered. "That must be it."

But she knew inside that it wasn't.

Somewhere far away in the night sky, tiny shadows blocked out the stars in dotted locations across the horizon. The bunker may have been destroyed, but the other space stations remained. It was tragic, in a way. They would float there, presumably full of empty hallways and fluorescent gray lights, until eventually their orbit decayed and they fell to Earth like meteors. None of them knew how long it would take for this to happen; 9S did some number crunching and came up with a suspicion that the stations would continue to drift completely uninhibited for millennia. Even after all three of them had long since died, however long that might take, the last remnants of YoRHa would still sit just out of their reach. At least they could be relatively sure nobody was up there looking down and suffering the same insignificance they felt while staring up.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Frequently, they thought of their pods. The sacrificial blood in the ritual that brought them back to life. 042 and 153 had given every last ounce of strength, every last little bit of juice they had, to fight against their programming and revive the androids. They could not have known when the group would regain consciousness, only that they would. Like statues they must have slumbered, watched over day in and day out by the little robots. Not that they even needed anything.

If the pods were still present, 2B and 9S could have asked what happened to the rest of the androids.

If the pods were still present, 2B and 9S could have asked for plans in how to build a boat and sail to the rest of the world.

If the pods were still present, 2B and 9S would not have felt so alone.

"Y'know," 9S said one day, "I kind of miss them. They weren't very friendly, but they still were our friends in a way."

2B nodded. "It was noble of them to sacrifice themselves like they did."

"Yeah."

When they'd awoken, 042 and 153 were at their feet. The gentle hum of the fans that allowed them to hover ran silent, their blinking red indicator lights no longer doing so. The box-shaped machines were completely lifeless, and they seemed to be almost cradling each other. A lifetime ago, the androids would have assumed they were incapable of such a gesture but given the circumstances, now they couldn't be sure of much of anything.

But they knew right away what had happened. YoRHa had been terminated, all of its life completely exhausted. Everybody they knew, and everyone they did not know, was gone. They checked their internal clocks to find out how long they had been dead to the world, but the data was corrupted and un-salvagable. Immediately, they missed the little robots. They'd have known. They'd have been able to explain so much. But they had drained the rest of their tiny battery supply to start the trio's achingly slow boot sequences... and by the time they'd all come to, it was simply too late.

The first thing they'd done upon regaining awareness of where they were, who they were, was to pick the robots up and take them to anybody who could help. YoRHa may have been gone, but their technology had to remain. Immediately they rushed to the resistance camp, cradling the suddenly so seemingly fragile machines in their arms, and found it completely empty. It looked like a battleground, wreckage and discarded machine parts strewn everywhere. Large black craters, dents in the hull of the Earth, dotted the campsite. A thin layer of black ash covered most of its surfaces. Whatever had happened here, it'd happened long ago, and 2B and 9S were struck with fear.

"They're all dead," A2 had said, mostly to herself. "All of them."

"What... could have happened here?" 9S asked, frantically scanning the environment for any survivors.

But A2 walked past him, her bare toes tinged black as she stepped through a pile of ash absent-mindedly. "It must have been YoRHa. The deletion of the androids must have affected everyone else who was conscious too."

"How is that possible?" 2B asked. Her hands were balled into shaking fists.

"It's probably not," A2 said, running a finger down one of the cold metal walls. She examined the ash in her hand, the remnants of some poor unsuspecting android, and rubbed it away with her thumb and forefinger. "It's just a guess." 

Whether she was correct or not, she maintained this theory ever since, having made up her mind and refused to change it for fear of the truth being something even more horrifying.

2B recalled, then, the pitiful little funeral they'd had. There was no way to revive their pods, not without someone to fix them, and so the poor creatures became martyrs for their fellow androids. They were buried in shallow graves at the resistance site, lunar tears laid on top of the dirt mounds they now sat under. The three androids stood around the graves- almost the size of that of children -and stared down, hands clasped, thinking of them. It was stupid. A2 scowled the whole time. 

But it was the least they could do.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

The idea of love was still pretty foreign to A2. She supposed she felt affection for 2B and 9S- and not just because they were all that was left -but because they reminded her of herself in a way. Constantly attempting to deny their programming, their base instincts, to do whatever they wanted. And now, with no directives left to obey, they must have felt like she did when she first wandered alone:

Lost.

But they obviously loved each other, at least. There was no reason for them to deny it anymore, and it was frankly disgusting how shameless they were about it. Not disgusting in the offensive way, A2 noted to herself, but in a way she couldn't quite place. 

She confronted them about it. "Tell me something," she asked one day. "Do you two know what being in love actually is?"

They recalled revelations from Jackass, about how it was just a chemical released into their core in response to stimuli, to encourage them to continue whatever behavior elicited the reaction.

"It's when our mind is telling us we're making the right decision." 2B said flatly, scientifically.

"Yeah," 9S agreed, "it's just that before now we didn't know what the 'right decision' really was."

A2 let them take solace in that. It was a simple, childlike definition, but they seemed content to leave it like that. She did not necessarily agree that it was so simple, but all saying so would accomplish would be messing with their poor fragile heads. So, for their sake, she kept her mouth shut.

"Whatever you say," she said. "Do me a favor, though. Show your love when I'm not looking. Have some damn decency, will you?"

To this they both looked shocked. As if they hadn't even noticed her presence when they caressed one another, when their lips met, when they embraced and just sat in the same position with their brains interfacing for hours. 2B's sudden embarrassed expression told A2 that in more than one case, she almost certainly literally hadn't.

"S-Sorry," 9S bowed his head to her. "We'll try to be more private."

But how private could they really be? The three of them had an entire planet- or at least, an entire continent -to themselves, yet they were afraid to leave each others' side for more than a couple paces at once. Even A2, the lone wolf, the wandering desperado, had grown so attached that there was unease snaking through her when she was without them however temporarily.

"Just go have sex or whatever it is you're doing on your own time, alright?" She tried to be ginger but it really had been bothering her. "I get it, but I really don't wanna have to look at it."

2B frowned. "We're not having..." But then she looked to 9S, wondering if that actually was, in some form, what they did when he interfaced with her. He stared back, confused as well. Pleasure was pleasure, but sex remained a completely foreign concept to them. They had no data on it because androids could not do it as humans could. They knew the process, but lacked the necessary tools, so to speak.

A2 just rolled her eyes.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

2B straddled 9S' lap as he sat upright against a tree stump. The shade felt cool on their flesh, a nice reprieve from the warm afternoon sun. The air imparted tingling sensations on their naked skin, clothes folded and deposited in neat piles beside them with surgical precision. A2 was nowhere to be seen, having felt the requested need for privacy in her head. 'Nowhere to be seen', of course, did not mean she wasn't nearby.

Her knees placed on either side of his rear, she was bucking gently against his body, their groins sliding against one another with the soft sound of flesh rustling. 2B's mouth was open and slack-jawed, tongue hanging out just a bit as she moaned deep, throaty moans into his face.

Both of their hands were cupped over each others' cheeks, their foreheads gingerly touching as they rocked against one another's light thrusts. It was merely for the massively increased sensation of touch, of course; they had no genitalia. 2B had a mound but there was nothing inside, it was only to complete her humanlike shape. 9S may as well have been a posing mannequin in a shop window.

But their brains were alive, connected like a plug to a socket, sparking and rattling and frying. He'd used his hacking to crank their emotional pleasure receptors as high as he could make them go without getting dangerous, and now here they were just vibrating with euphoria. Fireworks exploded in 2B's mind as her nose touched his very briefly. Every caress felt like bliss, every little light feathery touch eliciting deep groans from her. 9S too was whimpering, overwhelmed by the sensation. His eyes were tightly closed, his thighs squeezing together and toes curling back.

2B wrapped her arms around 9S' back and bit into his shoulder. His hands wormed their way around her hips, gripping them so tight that his already white knuckles seemed to go whiter. At this sensation she shivered, the muscles in her thighs and hips and ass clenching while she mashed her blank slate pelvis into his. Faster and faster she moved, grinding against his smaller frame like nothing else mattered. And, as her vision went a bit blurry and he responded with a few arrhythmic jerking thrusts of his own, to them, nothing else did matter.

In the coming months they would ask A2 to give them that same privacy while many times. Sometimes multiple times per week. They could not have sex as humans could, but emulating it felt just as pleasurable, and passionate.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

Months stretched on. The trio's daily routine remained mostly the same. They had no need to eat, so they didn't bother looking for food or hunting animal life. They had no need to rest, so they only entered a sleep state when there was nothing more to talk about. They had no need to wander, for there was nothing more to see on their little plateau of rock.

One day 2B and 9S hearkened back to Jean-Paul, the robot they once knew who rambled on for ages about philosophy. At the time they paid it no attention, disregarded its raving as just the rants of another machine. It was only just too late for Pascal's friendly village before they realized it probably had a point. For now they were in the same position, relatively speaking: Cast out by the world and left to live out the same existence they could not help but question.

They sat in a circle around a campfire that had long since turned to embers and thin, wavy smoke. Like a council of elders, weaving arcane machinations. Coupled with the dim light of the evening, the moon far overhead and shining down, their faces were aglow.

A2 snapped to attention in the middle of a conversation as she often did. These days her mind couldn't help but wander whenever the other two went over their usual rhetoric.

"I do still wonder how close we really are to being human, though," 9S said. His body was folded on itself in a seated position, arms balanced on his knees and his chin balanced on his arms. He stared into the fire, watching the remains of the cinders burn away.

"I imagine it's closer than we could know." 2B replied. "After all, we are androids, not robots." Even so, her face held no expression. Perhaps she had lost her admiration for humankind after finding out about their deception. 9S surely hadn't gotten over it, at the very least.

"Are we really androids?" His voice carried an underlying intensity. "We have no human parts. Isn't an android supposed to be at least partially human?"

"Maybe our emotions are the human element."

9S nodded. "Maybe, yeah. I guess it would make sense from an economical point of view."

"It does make me wonder what they would think if they saw us." 2B's tone was almost wistful.

"Us as in the android race, or us as in the three of us specifically?"

"The latter."

"Oh." He felt conflicted all of a sudden. "Well... we are pretty expressly defying our programming right now, so I doubt they'd be happy about that."

2B said nothing. She had no response.

He suspected her silence was out of disappointment in his reply. "But then again," he continued, "they might be proud to see us carving our own path. We protected them, even after we had the choice not to do so."

"Humans were ugly creatures," A2 muttered. "I'm glad they're gone."

2B pursed her lips. She too was staring at the embers now. "They gave us our lives."

"Fat lot of good we got out of that, huh." A2 responded, running a hand through her matted hair.

9S addressed her with a stern look. "That's not fair. If it weren't for their existence, we wouldn't exist either. Whether they were cruel or not, it all goes back to them."

"Just because they're our origin, doesn't mean we're indebted to them, y'know."

"Do you really believe that?" 9S asked, obviously disagreeing.

"We don't owe them anything." She said flatly, and now she also was watching the last of the flames wither and die, staring down the point of her nose at the other two and the campfire and attempting to feel nothing.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

A year had passed them now. The Earth was in full swing once more, singing a beautiful song each morning and a lullaby each night. It was as if, were it not for the remaining rubble and everlasting inhabitable structures, human kind had never existed.

"I need you to tell me."

"I won't." She replied, her bangs falling around her face. "I can't hurt you like that."

9S was reassuring. "You won't hurt me. Don't you think I deserve to know?"

"I do, but..." She hesitated, wanting to just repeat her desire not to harm him. She knew it wouldn't get her anywhere, though. He still had such persistence about him.

"Just tell him." A2's expression was grave.

"I..." 2B couldn't force out the words so easily as expected, but found it easier when she hung her head in what might've been called shame. "Okay."

She reached over to him, bridged the gap between their bodies. He just watched her as she gingerly clasped one of his hands in both of hers. For a short while she stared at it, wordlessly, her thumb rubbing little circles on his upturned palm. She watched his fingers flex as she applied a little pressure, her head tilting as horrible memories ran through her by the dozen. He put his other hand on top of hers, and they simply sat entwined.

Her voice was tiny when she spoke again. "Four hundred and thirty eight times." She murmured.

His eyes widened. "That many, huh..." He said, a ghastly paleness coming over his features all of a sudden. He felt nauseous.

"There was a period where I had to kill you almost every day for a year." 2B said, her heavy-lidded eyes staring at a speck of dirt on the ground. "I wanted to die. I wanted nothing more than to die but YoRHa wouldn't let me."

"Orders are orders," A2 grumbled, her voice dripping with venom toward their once-holy masters.

"It hurt me so much to see you killed time and time again, 9S." Her grip on him got a little tighter. "I'm so sorry."

"It's over now." He said, breathing still heavy from the revelation. He knew it wouldn't offer her much solace because he didn't get any from saying it either. Four hundred and thirty eight times. He wondered how many times he was stabbed, how many times he'd been choked out. How many times his head had simply been disconnected from his shoulders with one swing of her blade. It made him shudder.

"That doesn't make it right." 2B finally replied.

9S was still trying to remain calm. "It... wasn't your fault. You just said you didn't want to do it."

"I know." She was shivering now. "And seeing you resurrected every time as if I hadn't... murdered you... I felt so guilty."

He sighed. "You have no reason to feel that way anymore. It's just not logical."

"I don't care about logic anymore." She said bitterly. "Logic was my own killer in the end."

A2 felt a massive pang of guilt of her own surge through her body. Like lightning had struck her it traveled from her furrowed brow to her tensed toes, curled tightly in the sand beneath her feet. 2B sounded so frustrated, so distressed. Her entire world had fallen apart in such a short time. Everything she thought she knew had been destroyed, crushed right in front of her like a tin can. A2's hands clenched into tight fists and she shook, hoping the others would not notice.

Thankfully, they didn't seem to.

His voice was completely, perfectly, genuinely clear. "I love you, 2B. I always have, I know I have."

"And I will love you forever, 9S." She replied with melancholy.

A2 could stand it no longer. Her voice was rattling with a million different emotions as she spoke. "I need to be alone. Got some thinking to do." She said solemnly, departing before they could offer any words to try and stop her.

As soon as she was out of sight, she was sprinting. To where, she couldn't say. She needed to get away from the hurt, away from the feeling creeping its way into her heart. For so long now she'd tried to avoid thinking of 2B and 9S' affection for each other and how much she wanted something like that. How desperate she was even after all this time alone. Her breathing was shallow and pained as she ran so quickly a cloud of dust trailed near behind. Dirt and gravel and stone flew as she pushed her body faster and faster, squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth.

Why could she never find her peace? Why did the easy way out never come? So many years she'd lived now without companionship, and now that she had it she felt she didn't deserve it. Here at the end of the world, the end of all life, she felt like the endless void of time was STILL her only true friend.

As she pushed and pushed harder, so desperate to just run and run until she was going so fast she left Earth's orbit and flew into space, her body began protesting. She ignored it, hot tears starting to bubble up in her eyes for the first time in what felt like centuries. All this time, she'd never cried. She'd thought her emotions dead. Now she wished they were.

She felt such deep sorrow as she bounded across the wasteland, so fast what little dermal plating she had left was rattling in the wind. She found herself in the desert, squinting against sand and stone and sensory deprivation. She was screaming into the howling, furious wind, wordlessly screaming as every fiber of her being hurt and hurt and hurt.

She hit a particularly tall dune and lost her balance then, skipping off of the sand and tumbling head over heels down the slope. Her body rolled for several seconds, neck making an uncomfortable noise as it collided with a stone, and she came to a stop half-buried in sand at the bottom. 

For the longest time, she didn't even bother moving, letting the swirling sand nearly swallow her up. A fine layer of dust covered her as she grabbed handfuls of the grains in her fists and let it blow through her fingers. The first real emotions she'd felt in years and they had completely demolished her. She felt so broken, so utterly destroyed in mind alone that her body almost refused to go on. She let sand cover her like a thick blanket for just a while longer before slowly pushing to her bruised feet.

Trudging back to the top of the same dune that had just defeated her, she sat on the mountain and stared at the flurry of particles around her. It clouded her features, blocking out her senses. She became still as a statue, breathing in deep as it fell occasionally in the cracks in her flesh. As much as it hurt, as deeply as it pained her, this was what she needed. This solitude eased her mind. She wanted to be alone, to think and act for herself. To do everything, or maybe nothing, by her lonesome, as she always had.

She didn't return to 9S and 2B for several weeks. When she finally decided to come back, she knew they were going to be angry with what she would say. She didn't have to go far; she spotted them in a clearing of dead trees at the entrance to the desert. They'd been looking for her. She bit her lower lip, and began toward them.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

"You can't go." 9S said, his voice practically shaking. "You can't leave us."

A2 sat with her head in her hands, hiding her face from the judging stares of the others. She already felt awful about what she was going to do to them, and they couldn't even tell they were just making it worse.

Or maybe they could tell. "If it's what you need to do, then you should go." 2B said, her tone much more balanced by comparison. There was a hint of sorrow in her words, but her stare remained blank.

9S turned to her, aghast. "You support this?"

"No," she shook her head, "but you must see that she's not happy staying with us anymore."

A2 hung her head.

9S' gaze snapped back in her direction. "Do you really think you'll be happier on your own? How could you want that?"

She did not respond.

"Please, help me understand." He murmured. "I don't want to lose you."

After a long silence passed, A2 sighed. She pulled her knees almost to her chest and balanced her elbows on them, looking up at the pair with a frown. "Thank you," she said, "but I made up my mind a long goddamn time ago."

He looked like he'd been slapped. "Why didn't you tell us you felt this way? We could have helped you!"

"Helped me what??" She snapped back. "What help could you have given, huh? You ask me if I think I'll be happier alone? I could ask you the same."

"You could have at least tried."

She pounded the dirt with one fist. "You're not listening to me! This is what I want, okay? I'm just asking you not to try and come find me, otherwise I wouldn't have even bothered."

Now it was 2B's turn to react with disappointment. "You were going to leave without saying goodbye?"

A2 squeezed her eyes shut at the frailty of 2B's voice. "Of course I was. I wanted to avoid something like this happening." But after taking a deep breath, she chuckled dryly. "Guess I screwed that up, huh."

"You did." 2B smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes.

"Please, reconsider." 9S begged again. "We can help you work this out. We can..."

He didn't finish, but she knew what he was going to say anyway. "Fix me?" She completed his thought.

After that, none of them were sure what to say. They sat in awkward silence, just staring at the scenery or the ground or the sky, but not each other. 9S tried so hard to catch A2's glance, to show her that he cared about her and he needed her company and he was so sorry for everything he'd ever done to hurt her. But she didn't even look at him.

Eventually, she stood. She wanted to throw her arms around both of them, to tell them how much they meant to her and how much she was going to miss them. How she was happy to spend so much time with them though she acted like a bitter hurtful piece of trash, even now, even to the bitter end. Or maybe it was self-loathing that told her as much, but wouldn't let her say it. She knew 9S would probably never recover from her departure.

She broke the silence. "I'm going," she said simply.

2B watched her as she approached 9S, who was now staring intently directly at her face. With a gentle, ever so gentle movement, A2 leaned down and placed a single silent kiss on his forehead. When she turned from him, tears filled his eyes and he bit his lower lip to keep them from spilling over.

"Thank you for everything. I mean it." She said to 2B, planting her hands on the taller woman's shoulders. Without the heels, A2 stood short, submissive, for possibly the first time in her drawn-out life.

Drawing in a deep breath, 2B found she could not speak. She wanted to say 'you're welcome', or 'good luck', or any number of platitudes. 'I care about you', or even 'I love you'. She was positive that if she tried, she could coerce A2 into staying. 9S could not, he wasn't commanding enough, he didn't understand her strange desire to be alone. To him, companionship was the most important thing in life. But 2B very much understood her position, her thoughts and feelings, despite never saying so. And as they shared one last gaze... 2B thought that perhaps A2 was aware of this.

She about-faced and began to slowly stride toward the trees lining the forest clearing. They were so thick now, so tall and towering and old, that she could hide amongst their shadows and never be found. With a heavy heart, she knew that was exactly what she wanted.

One last time, 9S tried to stop her. He had to try. It was engraved in his programming.

"You're going to be all alone out there," he whimpered.

There was deep sadness, but also a seemingly hopeful resignation lining her features. 

"I'm used to being alone," she said quietly, her voice just a tiny meek thing on the howling wind. She picked up her pace slightly, squinting her eyes into narrow slits to brace against the swirling dust. She did not look back as she vanished into the treeline, and 2B and 9S never saw her again.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()


	2. The Eternal Cycle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I received a couple of questions about my liberties with the canon story, specifically how endings C and D show androids alive and well despite my story implying they all died in some cataclysmic event. To that I'd say that it doesn't much matter why the androids are all dead- it could be because of some cataclysmic event brought on by the sudden downing of the network, YoRHa, et al, all at once. It could have short circuited every android on the planet and they all died. Or, the story could simply take place long after the last conscious android died off. You can come up with your own reason if you like, the first one is what I thought of but if that's not satisfactory then it's in your hands. I think the story doesn't need that kind of justification to exist. It's all a what-if anyway.
> 
> I've got a feeling no small number of people won't like this story anymore after this chapter. Darker, yet darker, my friends and readers. As usual, please leave a review and let me know what you think.

Return to Ash

Chapter 2: The Eternal Cycle

"Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,

The Reaper came today.

An angel visited this green earth,

and took the flowers away." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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For a few days after A2's departure, neither 2B nor 9S spoke much. Perhaps they were paying their respects to her, or maybe they didn't have much to say. Like limp dolls, they just sat wherever their bodies fell and were silent.

9S took it much harder than 2B did. His voice, when they did speak, was lifeless and curt. She knew he still hadn't forgiven himself for his rage. Now that A2 was gone, though, she hoped he would be able to start the healing process. God, would it be slow, though.

"Why did she leave?" He would ask. Of course, she had no answer, but she wished she could offer him the support he needed. All she could do was hold him, stroke his hair, whisper that A2 was better off alone.

They sat in relative silence, just observing their surroundings. Weeks passed by and the pair just aimlessly let them. There was no point in stressing about the passage of time when it was simply infinite. The sun went down, came up, and repeated.

Though their conversation was lacking, their minds remained alive. 2B allowed 9S to poke and prod inside her as he pleased, exploring every facet of her. She wished she'd been built with hacking capabilities so she could return the favor. He made her twitch, writhe, forget about the problems that were now running ceaselessly through both of their heads.

But eventually he'd seen basically everything the was to see. He'd explored her memories and found that neither of them really wanted to relive them. He'd made her feel like a goddess. He'd taken apart every piece of her to find out exactly what made her tick. And yet, they were still no closer to true happiness.

They spoke of this matter. When they questioned what exactly they wanted, neither of them knew. They had nothing to want anymore. Not that their wishes had been fulfilled, just that the world was empty enough that it didn't matter what they wanted. Most of such things no longer existed.

Both could tell that the other was bothered by this revelation, but neither spoke of it. They simply sat in serenity and continued to enjoy one another's company for what it was worth. But a tiny sensation at the back of 2B's mind told her that this feeling couldn't last. She loved 9S, more than anything she could think of... but she didn't want to live forever. She suspected he didn't either.

Forever suddenly seemed like a very long time.

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It wasn't enough.

The Earth fought and fought, it fought till its last bitter breath. The first time the scourge had come, it tried hard to keep as many of its inhabitants from succumbing to the curse as it could. But forces of an extraterrestrial nature- extradimensional, even -were at work. It could do nothing but sit there and turn, watching them all die one by one. By one, by one, by one. Until there were zero.

White dust clouded the air. A horrible fog rolled over the planet's surface and clouded the atmosphere to the point where the poor blue orb was completely choked. So choked in fact that it rolled to a stop right there in the sky and did not move until it could once again feel the air around it.

This was millenia ago- before the machines. Before the alien race. Before the oil and sparks and foreign flesh there was human death en masse. They'd all been gone for longer than any machine had been alive. A plague that threatened to destroy the entire world and almost succeeded rolled over and over and did not stop... until one day, mysteriously, it did.

But somewhere it still lurked. Deep within the bowels, within the tiny splinters that made up its surface. Vestiges of the curse were rising up now, freed by the splitting of the ground as plates shifted. The Earth, for all its glee, was too eager. It moved too quickly and too freely to stomp out the last of the disease.

And now, as gray gas seeped up out of craters forming like pores in the planet's surface, it was rising again. This time, there was no hero to try and interfere. 

He'd tried, those thousands of years ago, for all that he was worth. And it just wasn't enough.

"Atmospheric pressure is changing," 9S said, his voice concerned. "Something's happening under the surface."

2B was far away.

"Hey. Hey, 2B, are you listening?"

She shook her head softly, blinking a few times. "Sorry, what was that?"

He brought up a display screen to show her. "Some kind of gas is coming out of holes deep in the Earth. Seems it's been there for thousands of years, and the atmosphere is changing because of it."

"Strange," she replied with a furrowed brow. "What does that mean exactly?"

9S shook his head. "I'm not sure yet. We'll have to analyze some of the particles to find out what they are, but I have no data on an event like this so we might not get an answer."

"Hmm."

He stood, offering her his hand. She took it eagerly. "Let's go check out one of the fissures, maybe it's just pockets of natural gas being released."

"Maybe," she said. But she noticed with some concern that his voice was wavering slightly. Uneven. He didn't believe his own words.

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What they saw shocked them. One of the fissures, a mile or so long and several yards wide, sat open like a gaping maw. Peering over the edge, 9S saw the sheer cliff face gradually shift into darkness far below. His distance readouts told him he was peering miles underground, so far he couldn't scan the bottom, far enough to conceal anything from those wandering the surface.

An ashen mist floated out of the hole like thick smoke, like a fire burned deep within the Earth and it was now being released. As if hell itself had driven a shovel up and up until it hit fresh air. A low groan, an awful rumbling somewhere deep in the hole shook the surface like a tiny earthquake as tectonic plates shifted and shuddered.

What frightened them most, however, was the surrounding area.

"What... are those?" 2B asked, examining the piles of soot sitting in large circles around the edge of the pit. She crouched and rubbed some of the dust between two fingers, just as A2 had so very long ago. It was an off-white color, unlike the dark gray mist, and felt like grains of sand. She crushed a grain between her fingertips and it splintered into tiny, shining particles.

9S squinted at his analysis of one of the piles, his expression hard to judge. "What..?" He said breathily.

She came to his side. "What is it?"

"These are... mammals." He said plainly, gesturing to the piles of white sand. "Or at least, they used to be. These piles contain traces of organic matter. A moose, a couple rats, a squirrel. Now they're... sodium chloride."

"Salt? Why?"

"I have no idea." 9S muttered sadly. "We're fine, though. It's a toxin, whatever this ash is, but it won't affect us."

2B looked at the dead trees and grass surrounding the canyon, some leaning over the edge like they were ready to be swallowed up. Sacrificed to some heathen demon down at the bottom of the pit. Over the next few days they monitored the hole. It did not get any wider, but the ash began to fill the sky, tint it an ugly yellow color. 9S suggested that the dead Earth, unmoving in any way for thousands of years, had concealed the gas imperceptibly below its surface. When it returned to life, the gas was released, and now it seemed to be accidentally killing itself all over again.

Every day they returned, more salt lined the hole, and one afternoon 2B was startled by a frightened scream from 9S.

She came running, sprinting as fast as her legs could take her. For a moment, she imagined being greeted by just another pile of salt wearing his blindfold and shuddered. He was backed up against one of the dead trees, pointing feverishly at the hole. He looked like he had just seen a ghost.

There, sitting amongst the swirling ash, was a rodent of some kind and a pile of freshly settling salt. The creature sniffed the lump of chloride, confused as to where its partner had just gone. It ignored the two androids as it walked around the clearing aimlessly for a moment, as if drunk. Then it stopped, stood stock-still...

And with a light sifting sound, it suddenly vaporized into its own cloud of salt as if by magic. And now 2B was screaming too.

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For months, they lived in fear of the gas. 9S' analysis of what it was ended with failure as existing research had been around longer than the knowledge database, and thus was not digitized. Having no idea what it was, where it came from, or how it turned organic creatures into such shining pillars of crystal, they made the choice to flee.

A looming gray haze clouded the horizon every time they moved, waiting several weeks for it to catch up before traveling further away before it could catch them. It was as if they were being actively pursued, though in actuality they suspected it was simply filling the atmosphere and they happened to be in the way. With chagrin, they knew inside that it would eventually surround them on their little island and they would have nowhere further to run from it. Whatever happened after that, they were at its mercy.

When that day finally came it was at least a year later, closer to two. They'd been forced inland long ago and now found themselves surrounded on all sides. The two of them climbed to the top of a tall peak to escape the mist, perhaps rise above it, but it followed them up and up until it completely eclipsed the top like a miasma full of swarming locusts.

"What's going to happen now?" 2B said, sitting on a jagged cliff edge. They stood in a dank cave halfway up the mountain, peering down at the pitch blackness below. Dark, pregnant clouds loomed in all directions, billowing slowly across the lower surface. 

9S voice was completely drained, hoarse almost. "It's going to swallow the surface. All of the life down there is going to die. Plants, animals, all of it."

"But not us." 2B interjected. Her voice trembled.

"No," he grimaced, "not us." The plant life would turn into ash just like the scourge itself, the animals to yet more eternal foamy pillars of salt. When it finished ravaging whatever was left down on the surface, inside the fog, only massive deposits of grit and ever-decaying buildings would remain.

"We can't give up," 9S whispered meekly.

"Never." 2B responded.

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Several more months passed before they were willing to make the journey back down to the surface. From their small mountain range, they watched every day as the fog churned and churned. It did its horrible work on the Earth, once more choking the life right out of it as it did long ago. It squeezed and squeezed, the fog lowering down and settling into motionless ash.

When they reached ground level, it was almost as if they had stepped into a desert. The egg-yolk yellow sky cast a haze on the black sand, glittering like coal in the mid-morning sunlight. 9S read their elevation as only slightly higher than before, with the dunes only burying the true surface by a few feet at best. Empty, barkless husks of trees clung tightly to their branches, poking out of the ash at random like gravestones.

Machine corpses dotted the landscape here and there, sticking up out of the sand as Emil's bulbous form once did a lifetime ago. The weight of their metal had caused the ash to settle around them over the months, push them up nearly to the surface. Their spherical heads stared lifelessly upward, bodies ranging from completely buried and small to sticking up like statues extending futilely toward the sky.

"It's all gone..." 9S said, staring off into the empty horizon. There were no more far-off forests, only very faint outlines of human structures still standing amongst the haze in the distance. 

2B's footsteps were wobbly as she climbed to the top of the nearest rolling hill, standing unsteadily atop it to get a better look. 9S did not join her for several minutes.

When he reached her side once more, he repeated his earlier utterance. "It's... all gone."

"It is."

"We're all that's left."

"We are."

"What do we do now..?"

2B choked on a sob.

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After some time, their determination returned anew. This world was dying and there was nothing they could do to stop it- both of them knew that very well. Or perhaps it already was dead, the deed finished. They still could not cross the ocean, though now it foamed and churned with more choppy, salty waters.

Daylight seemed to get longer again, nights once more becoming a rarity. The ugly and cloudless haze followed them everywhere. It was eerie in a way, like they were trapped in another dimension where sunlight lived untinted by the atmosphere of Earth. Where its searing rays could reach the ground level with ease and just burned the whole thing to a single floating cinder.

They sat on a couple of dead stumps, shaking and brushing black sand out of their clothes.

"I wonder if the humans wanted to live forever." 9S pondered. "Do you think they knew about their impending demise?"

"It's possible." 2B replied.

"I can't imagine something so terrible..." He poked the sand aimlessly with one finger, drawing absent-minded circles in the warm ground. "...as not knowing, I mean."

She sighed. "Can't you?" There was a little bit of hurt buried in 2B's voice.

9S smiled then. A sad, grim smile. "Well, alright, I guess I do know how that feels."

"I know what you mean, though. I'd prefer a slow death to a fast one, I think." 2B figured she may as well be honest with him. He deserved that much.

But he didn't seem to grasp the concept. "How come? Wouldn't you want it to be over as quick as possible?"

"No." She said.

He 'tsk'ed. "I know, 'no', but why?"

2B shrugged. "I'm not sure. It's just how I feel."

They were quiet for a moment, both staring at the ground with frustrated expressions. Perhaps for different reasons.

9S spoke again. "I dunno. I think a fast death would be better. Less suffering, you know?"

"But if it's slower, you have more time to come to terms with it."

"That's fair, yeah." He nodded. 

She sighed. "I think... the reason I feel that way is because of you."

"Oh... It's just that, I don't know if it's possible to come to terms with something like death." From his perspective, the idea was unfeasible. Most people, most creatures only died once. He had more insight.

"I guess we'll never know." She replied, and that was the end of the conversation. They said nothing until they'd finished shaking the sand out of their boots, stood, and decided what direction they wanted to head in next.

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They both felt the strain as the sand weighed down their ankles. Sometimes it piled so high, so loosely, as to come to their calves. They'd never know what a human would've felt like wandering through a desert, parched, overheated, unseen by society for days... but in this newfound wasteland, they felt they could sympathize. Tensions grew higher as the pair realized they had run out of things to see, and to say. Their love for each other knew no bounds and they'd suffered so much for it, but it was becoming pointedly harder for 2B to come into 9S' embrace at night.

They laid beside each other, staring up at the murky sky and missing those stars they'd grown so used to seeing. 9S' hands were locked behind his head, 2B's on her stomach. They missed when they held each others' hands tight, when they sat body to body instead of shoulder to shoulder. Yet, neither of them could say so for reasons they didn't understand.

"Wish we could still count the stars." He said, his voice a bit cracked from wandering the dunes all day without rest.

"Me too," 2B said in a subdued voice. "At least it'd give us something to do."

9S turned his head in her direction. "If you wanted, we could... you know..." It had been a long while, after all.

A dry snort left her nose.

"No, really." He was facing her with his body too now, his expression playful. "I could interface with your pleasure center just like we used to. I haven't lost my touch, y'know."

"Looking for permission?" She let her eyes flutter closed and listened to his embarrassed stammering. It felt almost as if it were the first day they'd woken up together. Just herself, 9S, and A2 in a wide open but empty world.

He swallowed his words and started over. "Consent, really, but yes. We can still feel good this way. We need it."

She nodded once though she had little faith it would help. "Alright." She turned to face him as well, one hand idly running down the front of her body in a gentle stroking motion. 9S closed his own eyes to avoid distractions and began his hack.

He was surprised to find that 2B's mind was still like an open book. No barriers, nothing to prevent him from probing around in places he probably shouldn't. He supposed that with no more enemy machines to counter-hack her, there was no reason to have such obstacles anymore. A small pain crossed his own mind when he delved for her pleasure center and found it at critically low levels- were it a physical object it'd be covered in dust and cobwebs.

He felt something, then. A nudging sensation, almost, if it could be described that way. His mind raced as he tried to figure out what was happening, but before he could use what little remained of his own consciousness to try and assemble the thought, he was yanked again. It was so real it almost felt physical. His mind, this data, he felt her pulling him. Pulling him deeper, deeper inside of her. Deeper than he wanted to go. Led through systems and processes by her guiding hand, he did not stop her as some strange something within her subconscious brought him to a destination.

"This is..." He examined 2B's central nervous system carefully, eyeing every little thing that made her tick. Every subdued emotion, every tiny bit of chugging machinery to make her unique. To make her... her. He felt another tug as he was brought along like a ragdoll through her mind, walls and barriers granting access like he'd said 'open sesame'.

2B's influence brought him deep into her pleasure center, and when he spied one neglected, practically insignificant number, he knew what she wanted him to do. 

In the real world, outside of their heads, 2B was whimpering. Her body rippled with a deep shudder. Being hacked, she couldn't move, but her thoughts were alive. Telling 9S what she wanted. What she needed. He felt his throat choke up then as he could nearly hear her voice, practically machine-like. Robotic. Monotone.

"Happy. Happy. Happy."

Over and over it repeated in his ears, a ceaseless plea. He tried to pull back, to exit her core and her brain and go back to his own body, but he couldn't. His exit route was closed. 2B's robotic begging continued in his ears, ringing louder and louder as he drew closer to changing her emotional state. Closer to cranking her happiness up as high as it could go, as high as she needed or wanted. Anything to stop this hurting.

"Okay." 9S said, his voice cracked. "Okay!" But the chorus didn't stop.

"Love. Love. Love."

Inside he knew this was wrong. He knew it wasn't really her saying these things. It was what she wanted, but it wasn't how she wanted to get it. It couldn't have been. But for her to ask this of him, some part of her was aware that 'real' happiness was just too hard to come by now. He hated himself for justifying what he was about to do- he hated that he felt he had to justify it. But with resignation, he adjusted the value and watched her expression change.

"Higher." The real 2B said, taking in shallow breaths. 

9S grunted in response, already uncomfortable with the level it was at. He'd have to jack it up even more for her to start feeling it after so long. 2B's emotional core was different than any other he'd seen- it was so tiny, so abused, that it needed a major boost for anything to even slightly affect her.

"Higher. Higher!" She whimpered, her pained expression beginning to give way to something akin to amusement. Not quite arousal, but closer. "Higher!"

As he notched it up further, poured pleasure directly into her brain like powder to a concrete mixer, she began to... smile. It was a sweet smile, one he hadn't seen in years now. He bit his lower lip to keep it from trembling as she sighed in contentment, that rush of adrenaline and endorphins creeping into her sorry form. Her breathing grew shallower still, more erratic.

He continued to climb to further levels of ecstasy, losing himself in her grin; it was so genuine, so affectionate. He felt the warm sinking of his heart in his chest as she seemed to thank him with her expression. It was all artificial, it was all just fake, but it still felt so very real. But something was wrong. Horribly wrong.

He exhaled like he'd been punched when she began to giggle. Her lips parted and she shuddered on the sand, arms weakly twithing as if attempting to politely cover her mouth. Immediately 9S knew what was happening, her nervous system was going berserk at the sudden increase in pleasure. It was just too much for her, but he couldn't stop it now. He felt her guiding hand continue to crank the value up even past where it sat.

As her cute chuckling gave way to full on laughter, she was writhing now on the ground, her extremities kicking and bucking as deep and throaty laughs left her frail form. Doubled over now, she laughed and laughed hoarsely like her lungs were going to burst. Tears welled up in her eyes and 9S watched with silent horror as she began sobbing, almost cackling in his face.

As she screamed and screamed, he spotted his window and darted for the exit, fleeing her mind like it was about to crush and kill him. He returned to his own body and scrambled away from her, putting a little distance between them. She looked possessed, like a demon, as her entire body flexed and tensed, thrusting and squirming like she was trying to escape her skin. But she looked so pained, so horribly pained. Her laughter was fake but her crying was real. He could tell, he'd seen both. It hurt him so much to look at.

Free to move again, she pounded and kicked at the sand like a child, sending dust clouds scattering into the air around them. She turned onto her stomach and buried her face in the dirt, smiling like a madwoman but no longer laughing, just weeping into herself. Slowly, cautiously, he approached her again, scooting back over to her side. When he turned her back over, the smile had vanished. He took her tiny wrists in his hands and pulled her closer, so that they were face to face once more, and did not flinch as she wailed loudly.

He let go of her hands and wrapped his arms around her, grabbing her tight and shaking like a leaf. She too was trembling, her own grip on him very weak and clingy. She placed her forehead on his just like they used to what felt like an entire lifetime ago and felt only sorrow.

When she tired of screaming into his face, she ducked down and laid her head on his neck. Yet, she still continued to whimper. "It's okay," he murmured into her hair. "It'll be okay. We won't do that again." When she had become still enough, he delved into her mind once more and found it completely open. No barriers, no rerouting. It was a single pure strip of light leading from his entry point to her emotional core. He brought her emotional state back down to the critically low level it was at before this nightmare and made his leave.

And yet, they continued to sob for several more hours.

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She seemed so very delicate after that. When they both regained the capacity for speech, the first thing she did was apologize for forcing him to do it. He refused to accept, citing that he could have stopped at any time and made a mistake. They both knew it was a lie, but he was so desperate to make her feel better. So desperate to return her to the 2B she once was in their glory days.

How sad, he considered, that a short period of rest after years-long wars and the end of the world could be considered 'glory days'.

They were standing on the edge of a tall, crumbling building. Below them a dust storm raged on; they'd come up to this vantage to escape it. Occasionally the wind would pick up and the sand would begin to swirl, kicking up more of the miasma as if it still had a purpose. 2B's posture was hunched, defeated and weak. Had 9S not been entertaining her company for several years now, he could have assumed she'd always been that way. 

"You don't need to keep saying you're sorry." 9S repeated for what felt like the millionth time. "It's okay."

2B shook her head. "I need to admit responsibility for it. It happened, and it's over."

"Yes, you're right," 9S affirmed, "but you can't keep blaming yourself. You couldn't stop."

"I didn't want to stop."

He fiddled with one of the buttons on his coat, trying to lawyer his way into getting her to accept his own apology. "Exactly. Then why get upset about it?"

"I used you." She said.

"I wanted to BE used. That was the whole point of making you feel better." A hint of frustration lined his tone of voice.

"That doesn't make it okay that I did so." She said, with an air of finality that told him he wasn't going to get anywhere. Even through all the hurt, through all they'd endured, 2B was still stubborn and decisive at heart. At least they had that.

What upset him the most about it was the fact she wasn't apologizing for the outcome. She didn't need to say she was sorry for that either, but it pained him more that she felt bad about taking advantage of him above all else. They stood and watched the billowing clouds below, neither of them willing to argue the point any further. Both 2B and 9S were well aware that the other would never concede, and so to them it was no longer worth discussing. Ironic, it seemed, that it hurt them both exactly as much for exactly the same reasons.

"How long until we keep moving?" 2B asked, breaking the silence.

Leaning over the edge to analyze the movement of the storm, 9S pursed his lips. "I'm not sure. It could be a couple more hours."

"Okay." She said flatly.

Another silent moment passed.

"9S..." She sighed. "Regardless of what we've done and seen..." She trailed off.

"If you're about to say you're sorry again, please don't."

"No." 2B almost smiled. "I was going to say that no matter what we've been through, even if we die here, I'm glad I got to spend this time with you."

He cocked his head. She knew something he didn't, and it bothered him. "2B, what's this all about?"

She ignored him, staring off into the murky horizon. "Thank you. Thank you for this."

He clenched his fists anxiously. "2B, you're scaring me. Tell me what's going on." 

She was looking down now. He followed her gaze down to her shoes, where she stood beside a small pile of debris. The sandstorm whirled below, and for the first time 9S noticed a nearly imperceptible rumbling somewhere far underneath them. The sand was shifting.

"I think this is it." 2B whispered, her voice inaudible over the groan of concrete and twisted steel. This time she did smile, turning over her shoulder to glance over his concerned expression. It was that genuine, soft grin from before, unmarred by meddling with her mind. She looked ethereal, glowing in the evening light like a shining metal sculpture. "I love--"

There was a furious roar as some structural weakness collapsed on itself on one of the lower floors. Both androids were shaken off of their feet, 9S stumbling to one knee. He frantically looked around as the siding on the building started to slide, tumble down into the abyss in chunks. Using his hands, he pushed to his feet only to be stumbled again by another monstrous groan. 2B sat on her rear, her legs out to one side, gripping the concrete as tightly as she could as it gave way. There was another sharp metal snap, and then they were in free-fall.

A solid crunch stopped them after a few feet, and they both hit the deck of the rooftop with solid 'thud's. He reached out for her, but the ground was shaking too much for him to stand. 

"2B!" He shouted, but she was looking down again. "2B!!" The top half of the building was folding in on itself, floors collapsing atop one another, burying the load-bearing bottom half in giant slabs of rubble.

9S gritted his teeth, fury racing through his mind. He felt so stupid. If they'd just analyzed the building's integrity before scaling it, if they'd never have come up here. If they had just tried to seal the holes they could've stopped the miasma. If they'd been more convincing they could've stopped A2 from leaving. If they hadn't been brought back to life they wouldn't be so deep in everlasting love.

As they began to sink into a dip in the rooftop, with the side walls rising up around them like the prophetical tower once did, he took his opportunity and rushed for her. She too had pushed to her feet and was just standing limply, watching the sky disappear as the building crumbled around them, arms dangling at her sides.

Just as one of the walls lost its balance and began to tumble inward, splintering into chunks on the pointed spikes of shattered steel beams, he reached her. She only just had time to turn around to see him sprinting for her, and awareness returned only for a moment as he tackled her hard.

He expected to knock her over, to shield her body from the falling debris, but instead she stumbled backward. She and 9S both lost their balance simultaneously, and he held her as tightly as he could as they tumbled directly out one of the windows. Were it any more perfectly timed, 9S could have sworn it was a push from a higher power.

But with no pods to slow their free-fall, they dropped several stories at terminal velocity, tumbling in the air. He clung to her, desperate to try and land on the bottom, to protect her from the impact. For the few seconds they were in the air he watched 2B's eyes, wide in shock, her hair whipping around in her face from the wind. She looked so alive, so full of feeling... so full of regret.

"Hungh!" 9S shouted as his back impacted with the ground with a loud 'crunch'. 2B landed on top of him, knocking the wind right out of his chest. The sound of her impact was a lot less painful than his, and he reveled in that for a moment. He saw spots, vision bleeding red at the edges. Thankfully they'd landed on the sand, which was much less hard than concrete would have been. She rolled off of his body involuntarily, landing just beside him. Trying to get up, 9S found that his strength was gone. He pushed almost to his elbows before dropping uselessly back to being horizontal. Both of them groaned weakly.

2B had just started to move herself when there was another rumbling, this time from above. They both threw their arms up as huge spikes of jagged metal began to descend on them, splinters shaking from the bark of the sprawling building still collapsing just in front of them. Simultaneously they went to raise their arms, shield themselves, but it was too late to get out of the way. 2B barely had time to gasp before a massive steel beam fell right for her, clattering to the ground with a deep metallic 'clang' right on top of her head.

Immediately 9S was scrambling to his feet, crying out wordlessly as he watched her get crushed. With every ounce of strength in his body he threw himself on the beam, grunting hard with the effort as it moved achingly slowly. After what felt like years to both of them, he screamed with effort as he gave it one final shove with his shoulders to knock it off of her. It tumbled once, breaking free of the sand, and then laid still.

What 9S saw, lying there on the sand in the imprint of the steel, shook him. 2B's face was crumpled. Thankfully, she'd turned to the side when it came down on her or else she very well might be dead. His mind flashed with images of her nose being pushed into her brain by the force and he uttered another guttural sound. Her hair was matted to her head by the force, following the new groove formed where a dented metal cheekbone sat. Spidery fissures lined the side of her cheek down to her jaw, ending at her chin and the bottom of her earlobe. The beautiful porcelain was cracked.

She writhed, eyes heavy-lidded and dull, her body in total shock. 9S darted around her and grabbed her by the shoulders, and she felt so very heavy as he dragged her up to the top of the nearby hill and to relative safety. The sandstorm was almost laughing at him as he futilely tugged her, one pace at a time, up the dune. He was choking and coughing and crying and as soon as they were clear, he slid on his knees to her side and grabbed her shoulders.

"Wake up! 2B, please, wake up!" He cried out, barely able to stammer out the words.

She didn't even react, now lying completely limp. Her brutalized face seemed to mock him, tell him to give up. To leave her to die. He checked her vitals, finding with some relief that she was still alive and relatively well for the situation. He shook her slightly, but she did not move so he did it again, this time harder.

"Nine... s..." She blinked a couple times, her vision returning from the blurry washed-out monochrome it was moments ago. Only one side of her face contorted as she squinted her eyes, allowing them to adjust to light and awareness and the surroundings.

He wrapped her in a tight embrace then, throwing his arms around her and supporting her back as she lay there on the dirt. For the longest time, she did not return his hug. He cared little, of course. Eventually, though, her arms gently snaked around his back as well and gripped the folds of his coat.

"I'm so sorry," he murmured into her shoulder. "I should've known. I should've been more careful."

2B ran a hand through his hair, weakly sliding down the back of his head and settling on his neck. "I don't blame you."

"Please blame me." He said in a broken voice. "Your face. 2B, your face..."

"Sssshhhh." She hushed him, bringing his head to her chest with her free hand. "You saved me."

"I'm not going to let you die. I won't be left alone here." His voice was muffled by the fabric of her shirt.

"Thank you." She said, both responding to him and continuing her earlier thought. With a sick, sinking feeling, 2B realized then that she had lost all of her strength. In that one moment, her will to fight had evaporated. After what they'd been through, after everything they'd done, she was ready to just lie down and let the world take care of her.

This feeling of wanting it all to be over that she hadn't felt in so long. She thought back to her time with YoRHa, the pain on 9S' face whenever she gave him time to realize he was about to be killed. Sometimes he fought. Sometimes he argued, spat, screamed. 

Sometimes he just let her do it.

He had that same pained expression now as he leaned up, broke free of her grasp. He knelt beside her and their faces met. She was looking into his eyes but his were focused elsewhere.

"Your face..." He said again, full of despair. Gingerly, his palm rose to her cheek, hoping this new injury didn't hurt her. From his cursory analysis it seemed entirely cosmetic, but he couldn't help but wince every time she blinked and for a moment her whole face was made lopsided. She did not stop him, did not turn away as his thumb followed the largest of the splintery cracks. From her ear, all the way down to her jaw it went, like a tiny canyon splitting off into cracked and dry earth. An ugly fissure pockmarking the beautiful surface.

She put her palm over the top of his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. He looked so hurt- more hurt than she even felt. Despite her reassurance, he clearly still blamed himself. The gears in his head were turning, turning, turning. As he furrowed his brow, 2B could tell his mind was racing in some way she could not determine.

He pulled both their hands away at the same time and curled in, still sitting beside her on his knees. She didn't move a single muscle as 9S came so close his lips brushed right past hers. Gently, ever so gently, his lips came to a rest in the center of the crater on her face. She let her eyes flutter closed as he gave the scar a kiss. A kiss to say he was sorry. To say he still thought she was beautiful. To say he was so scared of being alone, so terrified by the prospect, that he was willing to continue to support 2B despite her steadily declining mental state. Until the very end.

When he pulled away, it was as if something had clicked inside of him. This could not continue. He inhaled sharply. So far they'd been focused purely on their own survival. Their own feelings. Living for each other, sure, but outside of that there was nothing. It occurred to him now, looking at 2B's shattered and frail body, that they would die. Eventually, they would. Whether in some freak accident or the passage of time or by each others' hands, the cold hand of death would find them once again. But even more important than that...

Determination lined his features now as a deep frown came over him. "We have to do something about this, 2B. We can't just let the world die with us. Not like this."

She sighed, admiring the light in his eyes. The old naivete she once loved- and, somehow after all this time, still did. The face of a young man who had made a decision. Possibly, 2B considered, the most important one he could think of.

"Not like this."

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()


	3. Ultimatum

Return to Ash

Chapter 3: Ultimatum

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

9S sat beside 2B as she rested. For a while he'd been gently stroking her hair as she drifted off into sleep mode, but now that she was out like a light he had some time to himself. Being alone, despite her physically being right next to him, was a bit frightening. He knew he'd never survive this dreary heap by himself.

He wondered what A2 was doing right at that moment, as he still did frequently even though neither of them had spoken of her in years. Some small part of him hoped she was still alive, that someday they'd meet again.

But hope didn't stop him from doubting it.

He'd meant what he said to 2B. Something needed to be done to ensure their survival, even if only in a sentimental way. He glanced down at her cratered jawline and shuddered involuntarily at the thought of just slowly shutting down for good. It would happen, eventually. Though he couldn't put an expiration date on either of them, and he knew it wouldn't be any time soon... time was going to wear them down.

If they didn't lose their minds first. With a heavy heart- or similar, he didn't really know the feeling -he considered that 2B's mental state was slipping. It hurt him to see her so lifeless. Of course she'd never been one for much conversation but now when she remained silent it spoke more than she probably realized. He didn't blame her for losing her grip a bit. With no Bunker, no YoRHa, no directives, it was the first time she'd actually had to live for herself. Though they'd been wandering the empty world for years now, it certainly didn't feel that long for him... but he knew it probably felt like an eternity for her.

So far he'd held up pretty well by just ignoring the realities of the situation but he knew he couldn't manage that for much longer. Especially not now that it'd dawned on him that, yes, he and 2B truly were the last surviving hope for humanity. Whether the human genome actually did exist on the moon or not, and whether it was even still usable so many years later or not, neither mattered if it was out of their reach. He halfheartedly extended an arm up to the sky, watched his knuckles flex as he clenched his hand into a light fist. The stars seemed so much farther away without a method of easily reaching them.

He sighed, bringing his palms to his face and rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. What could he do? They had practically nothing to work with. Obviously there were no more androids, so bringing them back was a non-option. Most technology was completely unusable, and electricity was currently a pretty laughable prospect. All of the human resources once used to erect the free-standing world were either depleted or buried under the miasma in addition to the usual miles of earth.

"Yup," he murmured out loud. "Pretty bleak."

"Mm?" 2B shuffled, still lying in her curled-up position on the ground.

"Oh, sorry," he said. "Just thinking."

"Thinking about what?" Her voice was groggy. 2B's hand was groping for some part of him to grab onto. He laid down on his back, staring up at the sky, so she could gently grab his arm.

"Don't worry about it, you need your rest." He turned to look at her. Her eyes were open now, heavy lidded and so softly blinking at him.

She didn't move, just stared. "No, I'm fine."

Stubborn as ever. It took a moment for 9S to speak again. "Okay." He said softly.

"What are you thinking about?" She prompted him again.

"Well... I'm just trying to figure out how we can keep human-kind alive. No big issue." He smiled sadly at her. "I honestly don't even know where to start."

She was thinking now, those tactically-oriented gears in her head turning. "Hmm... What are our resources?"

"Not much." Craning his neck, he looked around aimlessly. "A lot of sand. Scrap metal from the dead machines. Concrete and steel, maybe some left over fossil fuels."

"That doesn't give us a real source of usable energy."

"No, it doesn't. Think there are any machine cores left?"

2B stiffened immediately. Were she a cat, he could have imagined the hairs on the back of her neck bristling. "No." She said coldly. 9S swallowed then, concerned that he'd touched a nerve.

He pursed his lips, but then nodded solemnly. "Yeah, they're probably all burnt out by now. They would be a good source of energy for whatever we need, though. Maybe we should look anyway."

"Mmh."

After a passing moment of silence, 2B's posture relaxed. They caught each others' gaze and shared a look then. Not quite of determination, but something sort of like it. Resolve, perhaps. They saw sparks in each other's eyes, some stirring feeling hidden under the surface for a very long time now. Something neither of them had really felt since their days under YoRHa's thumb. Wordlessly, they just stared at each other. For a mere second, there was absolute calm lining both of their expressions.

9S spoke first. "Are you going to be okay?" He asked, his voice gingerly and meek.

He expected her to scoff, or to narrow her eyes at him, or something. Anything. She seemed to have to physically consider this in her mind. It didn't fill him with much hope.

"Yes." She eventually nodded. "I'm going to be alright."

"Going to be."

"Yes."

"So you're not right now, then."

"Very perceptive."

He chuckled softly. At least he could be sure the old 2B wasn't completely gone. They both returned to their business after that, 9S staring back up at the sky and 2B trying to rest curled up in her little ball. Turned away from him, she stared at the tilted horizon through the bangs falling around her face. The black sand was glittering again in the dim moonlight- it was almost unfair how serene it looked for how horrible of a thing it was.

Very lightly, she moved a hand up to her own face. She hadn't really considered how the mark had affected her appearance- it wasn't like there were any mirrors with which to admire herself anymore. It did still matter to her, though, because she saw 9S' expression every time his eyes fell upon it. That told her all she needed to know without having to see it.

Her thumb dipped into the recession under her cheekbone, like one of the many dunes they sat upon day in and day out. She found herself wanting to smile at the comparison, but all she could manage instead was a look of resignation. The world was deceased, but she found herself glad now that they were not. Mere days ago, she'd wanted it all to just end. But now they had something to care about- a goal to strive for, for the first time in ages. Something to live for besides each other.

9S was going to do his damnedest to secure a future for whatever was left to save on this ugly, dead planet. He'd find a way. And it made her feel like she had a sense of purpose again, to be able to help him. For once, he was leading her instead of the other way around. 

But she found herself shuddering involuntarily at one of the few ideas he'd come up with.

Machine cores.

It made her feel bad to have immediately shot down what might have been their most realistic choice... but when she thought of the cores, she thought of the machines. When she thought of the machines, she thought of war and death and dying over and over and it brought her to a very grim place. A place she never wanted to go again.

She closed her eyes after another shudder and a breathy exhale. Even after all this time, she still hated them more than anything else in the remaining world.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

For days, 9S devoted as much of his processing power as he could to cracking a solution to the end of life. He wished he was less of a realist and more a philosopher, it might've made coming up with an idea easier.

He stroked his chin and ran a hand through his hair and hunched his shoulders and squinted his eyes, over and over again, a repeating pattern of things-people-do-when-they're-in-deep-thought... but none of it helped. He had nothing.

"Nothing yet..." He muttered to himself. It wasn't like he had to come up with something right now, in fact there was hardly any urgency at all, but the sudden weight of them being the last of the last had hit him hard. It was a strangely human feeling, somewhat of a mix of anxiety and confusion. All this time and he hadn't really bothered trying to comprehend what it meant to be truly alone in the world. Now that he'd almost lost 2B, he knew what the feeling was like.

This area of the desert was particularly barren. Other than the occasional pile of rubble poking halfheartedly out of the sand, it was just the two of them and a bunch of scrap metal. The crater looked like a caldera, surrounded by rising dunes on all sides- dunes which thankfully protected them from the dust storms now raging just outside of their periphery. It looked like a dumping ground for machine bodies. Some trash heap at the back end of the world for discarding unusable parts.

2B sat on a pile of broken-up concrete, a fitting throne for someone like them, she felt. Like the dead machines, reaching skyward in a last-ditch bid for freedom, they were scrambling for any reason to carry on. She hated feeling so defeatist but it was getting harder and harder to avoid at this point. In her heart, she hoped 9S would find a way to shoot for the moon and beyond, but in her mind she knew a solution probably no longer existed.

She watched him pace aimlessly around, obviously completely dead to the world besides his churning cerebral core. His OS chip no doubt running a couple hundred degrees hotter than its recommended temperature as he literally wracked his brain for an answer. She considered that she should be helping him. In a literal sense, she was not as smart as him just because of the difference in their make and model... but she still wished she could at least muster up the fortitude to try.

How lowly she felt. One of the stupid tin cans sat nearby, its torso buried halfway in the sand and its arms stretched up in a mock-prayer gesture. Frowning hard, she tried to ignore its pleading stance. To ignore its obvious display of thought and emotion. As she had for decades.

9S was wandering among the bodies. He wondered how far down this pit went below the ashes. Perhaps it stretched all the way to hell like the crags that once released the miasma. There could be hundreds of machines buried here. Perhaps they'd come here to congregate and combine their numbers, or to try and create another humanoid lifeform. Perhaps they simply came here to die, knowing the end was coming. For a moment he envied them for having such a luxury.

As he walked, his feet dragged on the sand, leaving a trailing snake of boot prints behind him. Weaving a path to nowhere, crossing back over his own lines, he stared down at the ground. It would have been better to just sit down where he stood but his feet would not stop moving. He felt... antsy, for lack of a better way he could phrase it. Something inside him knew that he was on the verge of a revelation, that the answer was right there in front of him. He just needed to reach out and take it.

His thoughts got the better of him, however, and he cried out as his foot caught on one of the speed bumps poking out of the dirt. He spilled over, knocking the machine's head loose and sending it rolling before him. 2B bolted upright instantly, hands curling into defensive fists, but after seeing that he'd just taken a spill she slowly returned to her seat.

"Shit..." He groaned, coughing and sputtering to remove the ash he'd eaten from his throat. The machine's spherical head came to a stop in front of him, its blank eyes staring into his. He caught his own reflection in its glassy eye sockets and noticed he was glowering. He pushed to one knee, but when he went to stand he found he did not have the strength. It took a try or two before he was able to get back up to his feet.

He could feel his black box humming with activity, like a racing heartbeat. Suddenly he wished he had been resting like 2B instead of pacing around like an idiot. With some bitter consideration he wondered how she would react if he decided to use his own black box as a source of energy. It certainly would last for some time, if only for her sake.

She'd never forgive him.

To that end, he kept thinking back to the machine cores. How they contained such power, enough to rival even their own black boxes. Hell, black boxes were MADE of machine parts. 2B would never approve of using the machine cores to produce energy...

But something struck him. Something once said to him a very long time ago about the machines' reason for existing. Just like any other living thing, they wanted to advance, to propagate their race, only they had no idea how. They had their network, sure, but they had no direction. Like YoRHa, they were lost and hurtling through time with no idea how to proceed. 

He thought of Pascal's little village. The machines could have advanced further if they felt the need to do so. They were all living proof. They could have created anything, much faster than any human, from the hive mind they'd been given. They could have been peaceful if they'd just been taught to be.

They could have been a race of creatures that went beyond androids. Maybe one that even went beyond humans.

9S stared at the empty-eyed machine head.

And then, he had an idea.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

In an instant, her nerves had met their end. The rebuilding she had tried so hard to do of late had been shattered into crumbled pieces in one fell swoop. Her fists were clenched.

"No," she muttered. "No, no, absolutely not."

9S could hear the pain in her voice. The memories of everything that had happened in their previous lives, weighing her down like a massive ball and chain. She shook like a leaf in the wind, full of fury and embers of fire at the mere suggestion.

"2B... Please. This is our only choice. It's the only thing we have left." He begged.

She grimaced at him, almost disgusted at his pleading. "Never again, 9S. I won't let it happen again."

"It won't happen again," he gestured at the air, "we can make it so that it can't happen again. We can give new life to the planet, don't you see?"

She stomped the dirt with one boot, emotion clouding her features. "And who are we to give new life? Who are we to think our legacy should be carried on?"

"We have to. We owe it to the humans, and to our fellow units. We owe it to everybody who ever lived." He said, exasperated.

2B was curt. "I don't disagree with that, you know I don't, but this is not the way."

"Then what is the way, 2B?" He took a step closer. "We're running out of time. We may live for hundreds more years, but what if it would take us a thousand to figure this out?"

She didn't know how to respond to that. Shaking her head, she bit her lip and then barked at him once more anyway. "Then it will die with us-"

"I won't let that happen." He replied before she'd even finished uttering the words.

"And do you think I want it to?" She took a step back to counter his step forward. "If we revive the machines we'll be destroying everything we fought for. We tried so hard to end their reign and now you want to resurrect them?"

He clenched and unclenched his fist anxiously. "Yes, but I don't want them to be as they were. Before, they were destined to fight us just like us to them but it doesn't have to be that way!"

"Who's to say it won't happen again regardless!" She scoffed. "I thought you knew better than this. When you give something with a hive mind free reign it will do whatever it takes to survive." Her thoughts turned to the Bunker, the massive vibrant splash of color and light and heat as it exploded into chunks of screaming metal and crumpled steel.

"Then why can't we? If we can tell it what's right and wrong then we can give it that freedom however we want."

She was shouting now. "And we can't play god like that! It's not our place!"

9S raised his voice to match her as best as his wobbly tone would let him. "We don't have a place anymore! There's no... position left for us to take!" 

"Our place is in solitude, 9S. This," she gestured to the ashy plains around them, "this is what's left for us and we have to accept it. That solitude is going to go away as soon as you bring those things back to life!"

"With the ability to direct their programming we can make sure they'll leave us alone--"

"We already are alone!!" She bit back with a furious scream. 

9S sighed, then lowered his head in shame. "2B, I have to do this."

"I won't be a part of it."

"It doesn't matter. I'm going to do it with you... or without you." He said plainly, his voice faltering only at the end.

Her breathing was so heavy, her exhales so shuddering. "I'll kill them. 9S, if you make them, I will not allow them to live. I can't."

He was unfazed. He'd expected such a threat. "I know."

She threw her arms up. "What, then? Are you going to have them end me? Are you going to strike me down yourself?" Her voice was as cracked and shattered as the cheek on her porcelain face. "Are you going to kill me, this time, 9S?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but she'd already made up her mind. She assumed a fighting stance, raising her fists limply and narrowing her eyes. 9S swallowed, feeling the scratched and rusted metal inside his throat constrict as if he actually produced saliva. Both of them were so weak, so without strength. Neither of them'd had the same strength they once claimed ownership of for dozens of years. They stood just far enough apart that they'd need to bridge the gap, and they stared each other in the eyes. His expression was blank, emotionless, but her lips were curled back like an angered wolf as she breathed hot air through her nostrils.

There was a tense moment, and 2B decided enough was enough. She cried out as she rushed at him, reeling back one fist to mash it into his cheek. He backpedaled away from her grasp, and her clenched hand met ashy air as he dodged. She continued to swipe furiously in his direction, desperate to knock him down. To knock some sense into him. To steer him away from starting the nightmare all over again. Anything to stop these horrible thoughts running through her own mind.

She kicked and cried out loudly enough to echo off of whatever edifices remained around them in this crumbling wasteland. Each flail of her limbs hurt, she felt servos and joints creaking inside her as she pursued him. He dove out of the way of every attack, her anger providing him ample openings with which to dodge. He knew he could riposte. He knew he could send her reeling with just one counter, or hack her to shut her various parts offline one by one to force her to stop. But he knew she needed this. He knew they needed this. For decades, they'd needed this.

Eventually his foot caught on a rock and she tackled his midsection, sending him sprawling into the dirt. She straddled him as she once did a million lifetimes ago, her eyes practically blind with infuriated tears. 9S' hands scrambled out to grab her wrists, and they caught flesh. The two of them struggled for grip for a moment, 2B squeezing her thighs around his legs to keep him pinned down, and she wrenched herself free. Reeling back, her eyes grew manic as her fist trembled.

"Ngh!" She rammed her knuckles right into his cheek. He reacted like his neck had been broken, opposite cheek hitting dirt and concrete. As he returned his gaze to meet hers, unwilling to fight back, she struck him again. And again. And again.

"Ungh! Hng! Ngh! Ngh! Hngh!" She drove her fist into his face again and again like a piston, completely lost in her desire to beat some sense into him, her incredibly frayed wits finally having snapped. It was so very unlike her, so animalistic, to be filled with rage like this. She sobbed openly now, big crystal clear tears boiling out of her white-hot eyes.

9S took her punishment, his body flailing with each connected hit. Here they were, the last two remaining creatures, the last life that existed. Fighting in the dirt like cavemen. 9S knew she wouldn't kill him, she couldn't. It hurt every time she socked him in the jaw but he knew she would eventually stop. Her emotional state was wild, blinking red lights an exclamation points shouted in 9S' head about how she was overheating herself, wearing herself out. Her vitals drew yellow, then orange, then blood red as her attacks grew weaker.

Eventually she punched him with such force that her body twisted, her elbow crashing into the dirt beside his head. She staggered, taking in a sharp breath as she collapsed into him. Battered and bruised, 9S let out a whooshing exhale as her body hit his hard. He was lying flat, unable to even move anymore, and she curled up in a ball on top of him, wracked with furious sobs as a thousand lifetimes of awful memories and fighting and murder slammed into her at once.

She laid there, feeling so pathetic and miserable and broken; her heart felt like someone was sitting on it. Somewhere far away from her thoughts, 9S choked and coughed lightly.

"You've... You've still got it." He chuckled wearily, wincing in pain at the movement of his jaw. It was sore already, and would only grow moreso for a while as it healed. One of the downsides of the extinction of android kind: No more self-repair gel.

She clutched his shirt tightly as he laid there limp beneath her. For a while, she murmured over and over, "Please don't do this. Please. Please."

With every word, he squeezed his eyes closed and felt pain shoot up his spine- but a different pain than the one in his face. She would forgive him, eventually. She would feel the way he did, eventually. He had to believe it, had to keep hope alive as much as he could. There wasn't much left to go around.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()()

For a time, she left him. Grave pain ran through her features as she departed in the night to wander the wastes alone and then didn't return. She felt she needed to clear her head, distance herself from the anger she was feeling. Seeing 9S' crumpled and bruised jaw made her feel like collapsing, or curling up into a little ball. She lost track of time in her solitude, her mind growing heavy with a desire to just drop where she stood and die.

How dare she attack 9S. How dare she think she knew better than him. The one thing, the one light that remained in their sad little existence and she'd almost ruined it because of her miserly personal feelings.

She damned YoRHa in her head, as she had done for decades now, for ever imparting on her that she should not feel emotion. If she'd been allowed to think in such a way from the start, maybe right now it wouldn't feel so horrible.

When she returned, he acted like she'd never gone anywhere. 9S remained understanding- far more so than she felt she deserved -and as naive and hopeful as ever. His face had healed, thankfully. They returned to observing each other and talking about nothing in particular and whiling away their endless days in each others' company. They had only a short few more discussions about his idea for saving the world, and they always ended in 2B rejecting it once more... this time without the thrown fists. 

9S knew he could not convince her with words. 2B, even after all this time, was still as steadfast and staunch in her beliefs as ever. If her mind changed, it would be her changing it, not him. So, he changed it instead with respect. He gave her the distance she desired on the subject, fully aware she was considering it every day. Every time he brought it up. He was sure she was thinking about it, running through every possible outcome in her head looking for one that would fit her desires. He knew her so well now.

And, eventually, she gave. Her rage subsided to what could have been called depression in a human; resignation to the cycle beginning anew. She was so desperate to avoid admitting it but she could avoid it no longer. 2B was afraid of the machines. Their stupid, pathetic little heads still stared at her blankly from time to time. Corpses, just husks, littering the ground everywhere. And yet some of them still seemed so alive. Their gray, lightless eyes staring straight through her into the sky. She imagined one of the petulant little droids stomping on her head until it cracked and shuddered.

But she went along with his plan, if only because the alternative was leaving his side- something she refused to ever do again -and they began their search. Somewhere, among the thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of machines lying empty and discarded, every individual part had to still exist.

They combed as many decayed cities and rolling plains and sandy deserts as they could reach, talking little along the way. There wasn't much more for them to talk about anymore. When there was light they scoured, picking up and dropping each machine body to rattle it around and find out what it contained. When there was darkness, they held each other, legs and hands and bodies intertwined as they stared deep into one another's very cores. They still felt such affection, such love, even despite their strained relationship. 9S fit her embrace perfectly and she fit his, like they were mirror images.

Eventually they began assembling pieces. A bolt, a screw, a couple scraps of wire. There were no blueprints for the machines to be found- if they did exist, they were long gone. They had so many tiny, practically invisible moving parts. Even the smallest machine seemed to have hundreds of bits and pieces and slots that fit together to form their still not-very-complex bodies. It took so long to find some parts that they began to lose that last shred of hope, to wonder what would happen if they could not fit rod A into slot B. Would the machine still function without a... complex ball joint tension simulator? Could it live and survive without a microchip to allow it to predict the weather in advance by 18 months? So many things that seemed unnecessary, and yet left gaping holes in the construction when they were absent or rotted away.

2B knew a similar feeling.

After months of sifting through an uncountable number of corpses, they had done it- or at least, as far as they could tell. Laid out in a grid the size of a city block was every single part of precisely one sphere-headed machine. From the biggest part (the shell of the head, of course) to the tiniest pristine nut, every piece was present. They admired their work, standing back to gaze upon their macabre science experiment.

9S breathed a sigh of relief. "Scan complete. That's everything."

"Good." 2B said. Her nod was slight, but genuine. Initially she had still been very vocal about her disagreement with the plan. She hadn't tried to beat 9S senseless again since that day, but she remained no stranger to expressing her distaste for reviving the machines. Over the days, weeks, months, he had convinced her. Broken through the barrier. He'd calmed her by explaining that if they could reprogram the central chip, 9S could become the new nervous system of the machines. He could become the new network. They already knew it was possible thanks to Eve. She remained uneasy, but as he always did, 9S made her feel safer.

"How do we start putting them together?" He wondered aloud, walking among the graveyard of scrap. "Surely with the head?"

"I imagine the feet would be better." 2B murmured. "The head we could assemble separate, and put it on last."

9S nodded. "I can see the logic in that, yeah. We'll have to be careful with the microchips, they need to be put together in a specific order or else they'll short out."

"How will we activate it?" She asked, realizing she'd never pondered that.

With a heavy sigh, 9S rubbed the back of his neck. He stared down at the circular head, disconnected from its eyes and eyelids and the rest of its parts. "I don't know. We'll find a way."

And so they spent hours like children playing with blocks, finding each piece among the pile and slotting them together one by one. No assembly line, no factory to do the work for them. What it could do in ten seconds, it took them days. The tension between them seemed to dissipate, or perhaps flee. For the first time in a while they felt connected again, like they were at the beginning. They felt the passion starting to return to their fragile forms as they assembled their Frankenstein's monster. After all this time, their love still held against the pressure bearing down on it. Compressed into a two-dimensional line though it was, it was still alive. They found themselves holding hands while they took breaks from their work to rest, absent-mindedly. An excitement was starting to build in them despite 2B's always-present caution. They were going to create life.

2B gently held the body in her arms, up just high enough for 9S to reach the neckline easily. He reached into its shell, pulling out plugs and wires until they stuck out of its neck like it had been dismembered. In the now-deceased former world, it probably would have been. 

Very gingerly, he held the head like a basketball. He rotated it so that the wires spilling out of the shell aligned, and with a deep breath, thrust them together. There were sparks of light and electricity from the crack separating its body from its head; it seemed he'd gotten the angle perfect on the first try.

The two of them laid it on the ground and stared, almost expecting it to jump up and start swinging its arms at them as so many hundreds of its brothers once did. Only now did 9S feel a tiny bit of the same fear 2B held; this creature would be simple, like a child. It was designed that way by its original creators. But it would be so much smarter than them, despite its slow deductive speed, by orders of magnitude. It would have no empathy, no sense of guilt, no love. It would be as cold and unfeeling as 2B once thought she herself could act. On its own, it would not be dangerous. But what they were going to do afterward might make it so.

They stood just mere inches apart, hands clasped together and fingers interlocked, as 9S raised his free hand to interface with its circuitry. It took a couple seconds for his hacking display to appear, and it fizzled with static just a bit before it came into focus. He couldn't tell if it was due to failing programming or just disuse, but supposed it didn't much matter. 2B held her breath as he reached into its foreign mind and groped around for the light switch. The big red button that read, "come to life".

For just a moment, there was complete silence. The air hung heavy, atmosphere almost palpable. There was no wind, no life. No crowing birds or humming street lights. Only ash, and soot, and the end of the world.

With a thick scraping sound that gave way to a light 'click', its eyes snapped open. Completely blank, expressionless, the machine stared up at the clouds just as 2B had seen so many times. Another rippling shudder crawled up her spine. As robotically as ever, the little machine's limbs moved one by one, slowly. As if it were a shuddering, hulking beast, though it only came to about waist height. It blinked absent-mindedly as its arms rotated a full 180 degrees, allowing it to push into a sitting position, and then it rose to its feet. No parts shook loose. Nothing came clanking out of it. It was alive.

For the moment, it completely disregarded 9S and 2B. As if they weren't there, the machine rotated its head to take in the surroundings. Collecting data on... whatever it had decided it needed data on. It turned away from them, stared at the empty horizon line, its little feet slipping just a small bit on the ashy dirt it stood on.

9S released 2B's hand as softly as he could and stooped over to address it. She recalled so clearly his voice asking her so many times, "Can you hear me?" as he did the same to the dwarf.

It didn't even acknowledge him, still gazing emptily into the distance.

"Uh... hey, I need to know if you can hear me." At his vague demand, it snapped to attention. The machine turned back toward the pair and now watched 9S through wide, dinner plate sized eye sockets.

Obviously, it had no mouth. Or rather, it did, but it was trapped beneath the spherical head and thus could not move it or respond. The androids knew full well that the robots could vocalize- that is, scream -but regular speech was done through transmittance via the network.

"I need to perform a logic test," he said, more to himself than 2B. She folded her arms under her chest, uncomfortably shifting at the sight of it. Hundreds of years. It had been hundreds of years since she'd seen a living machine, and it deeply unsettled her inside. But she shoved the feeling back down her gullet and into the pit of her stomach where it was fit to just sit and stew.

9S leaned in so the machine could hear him as clearly as possible. "What is zero plus zero?"

It did nothing. The only response he got were the light whirring and resonance from its inner bits and bobs.

He shared an almost nervous look with 2B. "Uh... Good enough. What is zero plus one?"

When he finished his question, it perked up a little. The robot looked around, almost wildly, presumably for a way to answer the question. When it found there was nothing to answer with after a few seconds of dedicated searching, it simply held up one arm in front of 9S' face and shook it lightly.

At this, he and 2B both drew in a close approximation of a gasp. Such a simple demonstration of intelligence, but it was a thousand times more astounding to them because they were now on the other side of the machines. For the first time, they were in charge. They were commanding its actions and it responded without even considering why. An easy question like 'what is zero plus one' wouldn't require much thought, of course, but seeing it regard them as anything more than scenery at best and enemies at worst was so foreign.

"One plus one?" he asked.

It held up both arms.

"One plus... two?"

It looked around again. Seeing nothing to represent 'three', it instead responded by taking a step forward. 2B instinctively bent her knees slightly and curled inward as it approached, ready to take it apart limb from limb should it attack. When it reached out and seized 9S' arm by the elbow, she went to strike...

...and stopped herself, as it gingerly held his arm up to represent a third count, an answer to his query. Its bright eyes looked to him for another question, or perhaps approval.

9S took his arm back from its grasp. There was a light 'clink' as its two pronged fingers tapped together, and it retracted its own hand as well, returning to its neutral position. Returning to zero.

"That'll complete the test," he said to it. He then added, "uh, thank you."

The words felt wrong as he said them. He thanked it. For what? Proving that it could count? For showing them it was conscious? For demonstrating intelligence? For being the last surviving bastion of hope either of them had on this cruel dead planet?

'All of the above', he decided.

He was still bending down to meet its globed head as he spoke once more. "I'm giving you a couple of directives. You are a machine, controlled by... uh, myself. You have your own independence and can act of your own free will, unless I say so. Do you understand?" 

His speech had been well-versed. He and 2B had made a mental note of everything he was to say to it, no more and no less. That said, their prepared speech needed a response in order to proceed. It peered at him blankly.

"Nod if you understand." His voice was barely above a mumble, and his breath caught in his throat. When it bobbed its head on its circular axis to affirm his command, his posture stiffened. He wondered if this was what it was like to be a god. To be a human.

"Okay," he continued. "Unit 2B and myself, Unit 9S, are friendly to you. Your kind is required to be friendly to us. Please record that statement and make a secure backup."

He gave it a moment to do so.

"You are the first unit of the group we're going to call, 'the new machines'. If you hold any programming information of your previous version, delete it. It's irrelevant information now." 

It nodded again, beginning to act a bit less like a statue and more like a living creature.

9S tried to keep his voice even, but it was faltering now. His attempt to stay clinical in addressing the robot was failing, but he knew it wouldn't mind. "Your purpose is... to self-replicate. Find machines that contain the same parts and use yourself as a template. Come back when there are an ample number of units and we will instruct you on what to do next. We'll leave it to your discretion to decide how many is enough."

The machine nodded, this time more slowly. Its brain was surely being assaulted with new information with every passing second, about life, about the world around it. It gawked at the two androids, its commanders, as data compounded and flowed and shuffled inside of it.

"Now go." 9S gestured away from the group. "You're free to do as you please."

It closed its eyes, presumably to assess the situation and think about what it... felt like doing. After a solid minute of total silence, it turned from them once again and started to walk. Arms at its sides, it stomped heavily on the ash, gaining better traction and movement control as it went. 2B returned to 9S' side and clasped his hand in hers once again. They were both trembling now. 

Eventually, the machine disappeared over the horizon, and for some time they both stood watching it turn into a smaller and smaller dot and then vanish. Even after that, neither of them could bear to move. Both their heads swam as one as the full brunt of their actions finally became too hard to ignore.

"We did it," 9S said, breathless. "We're all going to survive."

2B shook her head. "No."

"...No?"

"You did it."

With a light scoff, 9S shook his head, and for the first time in a very long time gave 2B a genuine and loving smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope I brought the story to a satisfying conclusion, and I hope you enjoyed. Sometimes vague hope is all you really need to be able to carry on. As always, leave a review and let me know what you thought of the story, and I'll see you in the next one.


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